A blog about dining, cooking, and eating in and around Orange County, California.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Garlic Shrimp Poke at Costco - Tustin

If you haven't noticed, Costco has become a significant player in the proliferation of poke in Orange County. They started testing the waters way before any of the current wave of copy-cat poke entrepreneurs even noticed that Pokinometry in Anaheim existed.

This was way back in May of 2014. It was then that I noticed a lonely booth in one of their main aisles one afternoon. I bought a pound of ahi limu poke, then wrote about it on OC Weekly's food blog. Soon after, the post went viral. The next few days, people swarmed that Costco for the poke and they reportedly ran out of stock. But at the same time the unexpected demand overwhelmed them, it made Costco realize OC was ready for poke. And boy, was it ever. Since that time, a new poke joint opens in these parts just about every other week.

Costco, recognizing the poke frenzy, has also expanded their selection to other Costcos, even if only on the weekends. They've also widened their poke offerings beyond just the ahi.

My favorite right now is the Garlic Shrimp Poke, which isn't technically poke, but then that definition has been stretched so far these days that I think this now actually qualifies. It's cooked shrimp, tossed with onion, scallions, sesame seeds, sesame oil, crushed kukui nuts, and garlic. It's a delicious meal in and of itself, slicked with the nuttiness of sesame oil, permeated with the garlic---but even more perfect eaten cold on top of warm steamed white rice. And it's also the thing that finally merges two distinct Hawaiian delicacies into one dish.

What's the other delicacy I'm talking about? Well, garlic shrimp from those garlic shrimp trucks, of course, which is the thing other than poke I crave as soon as I get off the plane in Hawaii.